Hunger

Category archives for Hunger

One of the ludicrous notions that has infected our political discourse is that government jobs aren’t ‘real’ jobs (tell that to fireman when your house is burning down…). But a lot of private sector jobs are heavily subsidized by the government. I’m not referring to private contractors hired by the government, but jobs that are…

Sadly, I’m not talking about the desire to learn. A recent survey of teachers (pdf) revealed the following about hunger in the U.S. classroom: •When K-8 public school teachers consider a list of problems they face in the classroom, they rate discipline as the top problem (83 percent), with student hunger falling among the second…

Before I get to two videos of Democratic congresswomen talking about abortion and birth control, something that Adam Serwer wrote is very germane: These videos are striking because they’re a reminder of how little of media coverage of political battles over abortion reflects the views of real human beings, as opposed to the reductive, paternalist…

There’s a lot money to be made providing aid to needy people. And where there’s money to be madeextracted, there will be an investment bank, in this case JPMorgan: In these hard times, some 43 million American families rely on food stamps. To the surprise of many, JPMorgan Chase is the largest processor of food…

There’s never a good time to be hungry–and, yes, people in the U.S. still experience actual hunger–but Thanksgiving is an especially cruel time. Since everything is closed today anyway, take a couple of minutes to send some help to your local foodbank. Every dollar helps–and they don’t just need food, but also funding to pay…

Apparently, if Newt Gingrich is to be believed (and why would anyone do that?), he doesn’t understand how food stamps stimulate the economy: Well, you know, I carry around a bumper sticker that says 2 plus 2 equals 4. So I’d be very curious how a dollar given to somebody becomes a $1.79. And I…

Last week, I showed pictures of what a food stamp budget actually buys. By way of Susie Madrak, we come across this article describing hunger in Philadelphia: Sherita Parks went shopping in a corner store in Frankford the other day with her too-thin daughter, Joe-anna, 2…. “I only wanted to spend a dollar today, so…

The Washington Independent ran pictures taken by Joel Berg, the executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, showing what a week’s worth of food stamps will buy you: Remember this amount of food includes supplemental funding from the ARRA. Here’s what one week looks like when you get rid off the supplemental…

If you’re Jewish, you’ll probably be reading this in a few hours, depending on your time zone. What really bugs me about the theopolitical right is their selective choosing of which parts of the Bible they will take ‘literally’ and which parts they ignore. They typically ignore this bit by my landsman Izzy, which is…

Last week, I wrote about the effects of poverty on educational performance, and, in particular, science education. I received many responses, both in comments and by email. One reason I wrote this is that our current wave of educational ‘reform’ seems utterly focused on teacher managerial issues. I’m willing to cede that part of the…